A special court in Mumbai on Wednesday issued a production warrant against gangster Dawood Ibrahim’s brother Iqbal Kaskar in a money laundering case registered by the Enforcement Directorate (ED). The special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court issued the warrant and directed the Taloja Central Jail authorities to produce Kaskar from the prison after ED’s counsel Hiten Venegavkar urged the court to do so. On Tuesday, the Central agency conducted raids in 10 locations in Mumbai on properties belonging to Kaskar.
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The case dates back to an FIR registered in the Kasarvadavli police station against Kaskar, Mumtaz Shaikh and Israr Ali Jamil Sayyed under the provisions of the Indian Penal Code. They were arrested on September 9, 2017 for forcibly extorting one flat and ₹90 lakh as protection money from builder Suresh Jain.
‘Crime for financial benefit’
According to the ED, “Kaskar and his associates were arrested under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act on October 24, 2017. The charge sheet states that the trio, along with Chotta Shakil, committed the crime for financial benefit. The National Investigation Agency [NIA] then registered an FIR against Kaskar, on the information that Dawood Ibrahim, designated as a Global Terrorist by the United Nations and also listed under the Unlawful Activities [Prevention] Act, runs an international terrorist network, namely D Company, which is involved in various terrorism/criminal activities such as arms smuggling narco-terrorism, underworld criminal syndicate, money laundering, unauthorised possession/acquisition of assets for raising terror funds and is working in collaboration with international terrorist organisation, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Al Qaeda.” The ED registered an Enforcement Case Information Registration on September 26, 2017 under the provision of the PMLA on the basis of the FIR registered by the NIA. Later the ambit of money laundering investigation has been expanded by incorporating the FIR filed by the NIA against Dawood and his associates.
The ED alleges, “Dawood after he left India started controlling criminal activities in India through his close associates like Haji Anees alias Anees Ibrahim Shaikh, Shakeel Shaikh alias Chhota Shakeel, Javed Patel alias Javed Chikhna, Tiger Memon, Iqbal Mirchi and Haseena Parkar.” Mr. Venegavkar argued that the accused have played a key role in various illegal activities, resulting in generation of proceeds of crime and were the actual beneficiaries.